Speed Vigilantes

Doctor Gridlock, the WASHINGTON POST’s traffic man, wrote in reply to Nancy Tiffany of Burke VA that he’d have to send a news photographer out to get her picture because she was the last person alive to abide by posted speed limits in the Washington DC metro area. Tiffany complained that whenever she drove she was “vilified, gestured and honked at, (and given) flashing headlights.” Dr G said that anyone trying to cruise at 60mph on the Beltway (posted at 55mph) will immediately have a line of frustrated fellow motorists on their tail, because the prevailing speed is 70mph. All true.

But Dr G is a twit. He calls for more police enforcement of 55mph on the Beltway! But why? 55mph on any motorway is an absurd law which richly deserves to be flouted. America traces its very creation to a people’s willingess to say ‘Enough’ to authoritarians invoking an unreasonable law, and to rise up in defiance of official oppressors. Dr G would have been an a flunkey of George III.